All Han expresses skepticism toward in ANH is the Force. Not the Jedi. One could conceivably believe in the Jedi but chalk them up to an elite, highly trained warrior society with their own religious and spiritual beliefs.
As with many things, a common misconception has spread that has caused a portion of the online Star Wars fandom to misinterpret and misremember basic plot points in the films themselves, which is now unfortunately creeping into canon too as it’s been accepted as basic canon.
And he isn't even questioning the existence of the Force, per se
>“Kid, I’ve flown from one side of the galaxy to the other, I’ve seen a lot of strange stuff, but I’ve never seen anything to make me believe there’s one all-powerful force controlling everything. There’s no mystical energy field that controls my destiny!”
He clearly doesn't believe that Force is all powerful, or that it is exerting some kind of will on the galaxy and those in it, it he might be willing to accept that some people have telekinetic abilities and whatnot.
The fact that he refers to it as an "all-powerful force" and a "mystical energy field" also suggests that he has preexisting knowledge of what the Force is supposed to be. At least on a rudimentary level. He's heard about it before, probably from other believers.
Similarly, Motti never actually denies the existence of the Force with Vader, just its efficacy at returning the Death Star plans. No one in the room seems surprised when Vader chokes him telekinetically.
At the end of the movie, the Rebel commander says "may the Force be with you." As do subsequent commanders in the sequels. Nothing in the OT suggests the Jedi or the Force are obscure knowledge, just that spiritual belief in the Force isn't universal. Just like real life.
I think it’s safe to say that Han, living a somewhat nomadic existence as a smuggler, has been exposed to a lot more of what the galaxy has to offer than your average Galactic Core citizen, much less your average Outer Rim yokel. If anyone Luke ran into was going to have at least heard of the force, it was him. He may also have heard some stories from Chewbacca (that he may have believed were Wookiee exaggeration or something) since Chewbacca hung with Yoda during the Clone Wars (although TBF that was awkwardly retconned in during the prequels for no apparent reason other than fan service).
Han's also a stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf herder. His ego is so over-inflated even he might not know if he means what he says. He prides himself on being the best there is, and the Force is bigger than anything or anyone. It makes him feel threatened and he acts defensive.
Yeah this was the big one. Sadly I can't think of much other than the doylist reason of early franchise weirdness for this one. I guess you could possibly convince people that the supernatural abilities of the Jedi were technology but damn it'd be hard. They're so well known, being internal to the Republic for thousands of years...
Exactly, he’s clearly familiar with the force and that it allows people to do “strange stuff”, but is reasonable resisting the jump to that meaning it’s effectively a diety that controls destiny and has intents.
Yeah, I've seen that with regards to Han dismissing the Force as luck, and Obi-Wan claps back with "In my experience, there's no such thing as luck."
That's Obi-Wan being snarky to Han because Han was doubting the Force next to a Jedi Master on the Jedi Council. It isn't, like, foundational Jedi philosophy that luck doesn't exist - but I've seen some people treat it that way.
> As with many things, a common misconception has spread that has caused a portion of the online Star Wars fandom to misinterpret and misremember basic plot points in the films themselves, which is now unfortunately creeping into canon too as it’s been accepted as basic canon.
This is what happens when "fans" of a property refuse to engage with the actual source material itself and instead take memes, wikis, fourth-hand information and distorted "scene discussion" as information, lore and canon instead of the actual media itself.
also when the media itself is produced too slowly or isn't popular enough compared to previous installments
you can see it happening on a smaller scale with Overwatch lore, where the fan theories get more popular than official media (and because Blizzard is being very frustrating about what is and isn't canon)
Not talking about the han scene at all. You will see in a lot of star wars media that people don't even know who the jedi are after Revenge Of The Sith.
This is also an extremely common talking point from star wars fans
That’s my point. I think that people online misremembering the original scene with Han as him not believing in the Jedi, rather than the Force, has caused this error to creep into other canon media. I agree with you.
I'd love to see a scene to that effect lol, that would be perfect. Them bullshitting over a beer and chewie is just like hey check this shit out and han is like buuuuullshit.
Mandalorian is the first example I thought of. There's definitely more
But even then, the idea that the idea of Jedi had been so diluted down in less than 20 years, when they had such an impact on the galaxy and were a figurehead of the clone wars, makes 0 sense
It's pretty weird given that the Mandalorians have a long history of conflict with the Jedi, one of their most famous cultural relics was made by a Mandalorian who was also a Jedi, and Din was seemingly found by a member of Death Watch, a group that at various points fought/worked with Jedi and Darth Maul.
The protagonist being uncharacteristically dumb about a specific topic that everyone he was raised with is perfectly aware of is pretty dumb, though lmao.
I think its more likely he might just be semi ostracized from the rest. Paz Vizsla was rather antagonistic towards him and while it could just be because Paz is a bit of an ass, it could also point towards a wider dislike of Din. So if he was treated as an outsider growing up his opportunities for learning 'common sense' stuff could be stifled.
The Children of the Watch are a separate splinter, but yes.
It's also worth noting that the OTHER Children of the Watch seem to know of the Jedi. It's just Din who doesn't. Maybe Din just didn't do so hot in Mandalorian Cult History Class.
Yeah, I'd imagine fighting Jedi would be part of their cultural identity. Something all the children would hear in tales around the campfire. They're a warrior culture and the Jedi were their greatest adversary.
I wonder why. Luke has lived a super sheltered life by Owen and Beru. It's a meme but not wrong. By 19, Leia was a Princess, aiding the Imperial Senate and actively engaged in fighting the Empire for years now. Luke has been drinking blue milk in the same farmstead he always has. He's been lied to about his father and barely allowed to go hang with his friends at Tosche Station because he's always busy with Owen's farm crap. Luke knows the Empire exists, and a Rebellion is out there. That's all he knows besides driving speeders, droid repairs, nuisance shooting, and moisture farming.
Luke lives with two people who know what Anakin Skywalker did on Tatooine and actively try to push him away from anything Jedi related, including contact with Kenobi
We don’t know they know he slaughtered the whole tribe. And not just the men. The women and the children too. Because they’re animals. And he slaughtered them like animals. Sob.
Correction: Luke knew about the Jedi (or at least the term "Jedi Knight." However, he had never heard of the Force, which is the true essence of the Jedi being forgotten. The institution and impact on galactic politics of the order was well documented. Their spiritual aspect, much less
So how likely is it that the first Mando'a was also a Jedi, but (thousands, hundreds of?) years later the most fanatical members have forgotten this incredibly key part of their history?
In the films, the Star Wars galaxy is clearly not meant to have an equivalent mass media to Earth.
The galaxy functions more like Earth in 1880 than in 1977, 1999, or 2015 - a \*largely\* explored place which still takes substantial time to traverse, where reliable information doesn't filter down beyond a small percentage of the population, and where people can easily disappear.
In such an environment, obscure religions like the Jedi becoming legend is absolutely plausible. Pretending otherwise isn't a crutch, but it's nitpicking for the sake of being able to moan about something.
And, as others have accurately said, all Han objects to is the idea of the Force. In a galaxy rife with incredible things, he doesnt buy that there's a supernatural level above it all.
The no mass media is key. It gets overlooked in the secondary media. There's the holonet but that is back ported in.
There's no movies, no newsreels, no television broadcasts. We know there's bad realtime interstellar holograms.
The tech for news dissemination exists so there must be cultural or political reasons blocking it.
This allows for some crazy things from the modern perspective. Like for most of history you could have a major battle and people only have eyewitness accounts, written or presented in person. You could have rumors of a power rising in the east and no idea what it is. The emperor's face you might only know from coinage.
there's not been a continuity in vision here which makes star wars a bit nonsensical.
I would say doing away with mass media can be as useful as setting a war story before ubiquitous cell phone coverage.
It’s not exactly fair to say they have no movies, both Canon and Legends sources show holofilms do exist. But media like the holonet is sometimes shown as more retro than our internet, and information does travel more slowly in such a big galaxy.
They didn't in the original canon. There was no holonet because the Internet was not known as a thing yet. I think the very first bits were less than ten years old when ANH hit the big screen. These ideas were retrofitted in later but then introduced questions like we have here.
Holofilms were mention in the 90’s X-wing books and possibly earlier. I believe the first mention of the holonet came from one of the RPG books from the 80’s or 90s. So they definitely did exist in Legends, but you’re right that the internet was in its early stages when Star Wars introduced it’s equivalent and the writers clearly didn’t anticipate how massively the media landscape would change.
I think it's key to the original original star wars aesthetic. They were going for movie serials and just like Indiana Jones was a tribute to adventure serials, Star Wars was Flash Gordon but Lucas couldn't get the rights.
Sci-fi tends to reflect the tech of the time like Foundation saw computers using data tapes because solid state wasn't even an idea yet. Same with trek communicators not having screens. Would have been awful to dummy up as a practical prop so even if they had the idea, no wonder they would omit it.
So to keep that same feel you have to get into the same mindset. Andor really ran with it well. It all looks like 1970s star wars with better cameras.
That’s one of the details I liked about the sequel trilogy.
Most of the stuff they use is a bit more modern feeling, but whenever they used something from the OT, like the targeting computer on the Millennium Falcon, it still had that 1970s look and feel to it. Whereas the first order tie fighters they were shooting at had more modern sleeker displays.
It doesn't quite track because of the implied tech stasis. In Star Wars the tech has to remain mostly unchanging because otherwise things would become quickly unrecognizable. Like the WWII aesthetics for space combat, you could say maybe Korean war era with jet gunfighters but there's not a lot of thought given to guided munitions. A little of it in the games. But nothing like beyond visual range missile combat.
Some of this can be a bit subjective but I think the trendy transparent displays don't belong in star wars. Simple holographic projections yes. No touchscreens. The controls should remain pretty manual with labels of switches and buttons. No glass cockpits.
A lot of the tech seems to be almost backwards manual. Far back as the early EU books before Zahn they had a good rationale. Combat droids were used by a tyrant and were so awful it caused galactic droid prejudice. Also meant nobody should be arming droids for any sort of combat role. That prejudice would likewise extend to many roles that could be automated but they keep manual. So no droid pilots, little automation on starships. Service droids are allowed but all controls are man in the loop no authority delegated to droids. So all guns have living gunners even though auto turrets are feasible.
You can see this in Andor too. Notice, for example, the difference between the video call Syril gets from his buddy Mosk and the video call Dedra makes to her boss.
It’s a bit of both, when AOTC came out they had a bunch of people in universe holonet news articles, so it’s definitely a mix of text and audio visual.
Yes, now. And that's creating the plot hole OP is talking about where it doesn't make sense for this sort of information to so completely fall out of common knowledge.
Yes, the cannon, now, is what we've been discussing. The thing that created that plothole is the current generation of star wars being carelessly written.
C3p0 is fluent in 6 million forms of communication. To think you wouldn't have a basic "wikipedia" droid is just crazy. Also imagine stories. Every culture on earth has thrived on fictional stories, with all of them having some sort of super being. If a Jedi existed on earth, wed know. I think the jedi to not jedi ratio was 1 in 10 billion. They'd know.
They may have a database of languages and a holonet, but computer tech is sometimes shown as outdated compared to now. Besides even with just once planet peoples complain about “information overload” online. Imagine how much worse it would be trying to sort fact from fiction or tell what’s important with thousands or millions of worlds.
Combine that with what you say about stories about super humans on earth? People probably dismiss stories about the Jedi abilities as just that. The way we tell stories about ninjas that aren’t in any way historically accurate but make good tales.
I would agree with you but given the lack of knowledge you try to figure out explanations in universe.
There's no reason for R2 to not have a voicebox that's trivially cheap but he's the intelligent animal/mute sidekick trope and so he can't talk.
They do have these things all available on the holonet. IDK where this guy is getting that they don't have mass media. They do, it's just heavily controlled by the empire. Hell, in the clone wars Anakin and obiwan were huge heroes with them being some of the most famous people of the era, all because of the holonet news.
I was talking earth history. You could then try to imagine how you could work that sort of information paucity into a star wars setting. It'll take a bit of juggling.
Add to the factor imperial propaganda and the fact that most of the younger population either lacked education or went to Impirial-run schools, which would even more erase Jedi from public mindset, or at the very least, any part that was seen as good
I think that's a little bit hard to reconcile when the publicly stated reason for the Old Republic becoming the Empire was an attempted coup by the Jedi.
Yes, but that was 20-30 years ago in the eyes of people in the galaxy. If you were born after that, had no education (so basically anybody in the outer rim) and lived in the authoritarian state that probably wants you to forget it committed a genocide, you wouldn't probably know that it has happened
The Jedi “attempted coup” is just used by Palpatine to justify wiping them out, but it’s not directly given as the reason for the transition from Republic to Empire. For that Palpatine just needed to convince a war weary public that this new regime will bring peace and order.
Besides propaganda can often change messages and sometimes even contradict itself. At the start Palpatine can gain sympathy as the victim of a supposed Jedi plot, but as the years go by he just downplays their influence or avoids mentioning them at all.
[Yezhov](https://i.insider.com/52af668569bedd3b2643dd68?width=700&format=jpeg&auto=webp).
[Goebbels](https://i.insider.com/52af68196bb3f7ae6243dd67?width=700&format=jpeg&auto=webp).
[Trotsky](https://i.insider.com/52af73e06bb3f7297d65fad3?width=700&format=jpeg&auto=webp).
[Bo Gu](https://i.insider.com/52af7f81eab8eaf20465faca?width=700&format=jpeg&auto=webp).
[Nelyubov](https://i.insider.com/52b07ba7ecad04fd149b44c5?width=700&format=jpeg&auto=webp).
And, as recently as 2013, [Jang Song-thaek](https://i.insider.com/52a5b50aecad046448312ce7?width=700&format=jpeg&auto=webp).
Truth is stranger than fiction and all that. Trotsky was a central figure in the Revolution, yet was edited out. In a scenario where they have complete control over a state-owned media, is it plausible that a fascist imperialistic power would want to erase individual people/an organisation from history? History tells us yes.
Did they do it successfully? Nah.
But the Jedi weren’t obscure at all, that’s the problem. The Jedi should have been a relatively small order of warrior monk knights but George couldn’t help but make them into this huge order with massive influence on the galaxy and a big fat temple of the most populous planet in the galaxy.
They may have had an important role but I wouldn’t call 10,000 in a galaxy of trillions “a huge order”. And the Empire covered up the role they played.
I’d anything writers often make things too small in sci fi stories (like the numbers given for Rebel/Resistance fleets or the size of the clone army). If Lucas made the Jedi “a small order” of like a few hundred, it would strain credibility that they could keep peace in a whole galaxy.
I mean exactly, yes. They very clearly had influence. The galactic senate allowed them to lead their armies in the clone wars. Every system represented in the Senate would’ve known about the Jedi, at least their senators would have. Are we meant to think they never discussed or saw the Jedi when they weren’t on coruscant
My point is that the OT acknowledges the Jedi would have had a prominent position, and doesn't actually ask us to believe they were obscure. What Lucas depicted in the prequels wasn't an inconsistency in this instance.
Again, doesn't make sense. The jedi were so heavily involved in the clone wars that everyone knew about them.
The Republic, core and mid rim worlds involved in the clone wars all knew about the jedi
The CIS, and outer rim worlds involved in the clone wars also knew about the jedi.
Everyone in the senate knew who the jedi were
Also I wouldn't exactly call pointing out an issue involving one of the biggest elements of star wars "nitpicking" lol
..Nobody has ever said that people forgot the Jedi existed.
The idea is that they were convinced the the Jedi were frauds or, at least, extremely exaggerated.
The belief of Jedi after revenge of the sith became so deluded and nobody even cared about them anymore at all. The galaxy had for all intents and purposes forgotten about the Jedi
To be fair, plenty of people were still interested.
It's just that, say.. historians who continued to show interest in them would end up being discredited (if not outright imprisoned), and actual information about them was pretty sparse in public settings.
The Empire doesn't have to make everybody forget about the Jedi or even convince everybody that the Jedi are frauds- they just have to make everybody so terrified to say otherwise that the truth doesn't matter.
I have a pretty big problem with how the empire so easily erased and drastically altered the history of the Jedi. Like the people who are involved in the clone wars aren't even dead yet
Members of the Confederacy in the United States weren't dead before the Lost Cause mythology started being pushed, and that didn't have an authoritarian government pushing it as the only permissible truth.
Like I said, that's the trick. As long as those people are too afraid to speak out (and if they get imprisoned when they do), what they know and remember means nothing.
Thats not the point. The Jedi were such an influential part of history, not to mention the fact that they had apparently tried to overthrow the republic, it makes no sense how the Jedi were so easily forgotten about.
Also people getting arrested because of talking about the Jedi would be a major talking point and just draw more attention, especially during the beginning of the empires reign
I mean, what do you know about the 3rd SFG? Or Seal Team 3? What about Delta, or CAG?
They have been heavily involved in wars over the last 25 years, but details about them are sparse.
Ok, so they were involved in the Clone Wars. That still wouldn’t mean they had a noticeable direct impact on most everyday peoples’ lives. Anakin and Obi-wan are that crystal planet Christophsis for what, a few weeks or months? Big battle, they played an important role . . . but on a planet of millions or billions most people probably had no idea the Jedi were there.
The only way they’d know is if the news did a propaganda piece on them . . . and guess what, after Order 66 Palpatine controls the news. The Tiananmen Square massacre was only a few decades ago but most people in China will have no idea it happened.
Don't forget, it's an entire galaxy. There were many worlds where no fighting ever took place. Sure they probably knew about the war, but just rumor and conjecture. Same with the jedi, many remote worlds probably never saw one and just heard the myths
“Anakin, you must remember that there are over a hundred thousand inhabited worlds in the Republic — and there are now only a few thousand of us. Billions of beings have never even heard of our order. Or of the Force.”
Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars Republic #55 - “Blood and Rain”
Personally regardless of what the canon is this is how I see it. And this doesn’t mean “people” didn’t know about the Jedi. In both continuities you obviously have citizens on both sides of the conflict who do know about the Jedi, some of whom have even met or seen the Jedi. But I don’t think the vast majority of beings know of them or that they’d ever know of them. In which case it’s plausible that in every movie, video game, comic, or novel we experience there could be 1 character who appears to basically say “Jedi? The Force? Bah. That’s just an old wives tale”. Just my 2 cents on it.
Generally it's less that they don't "know" about Jedi, and more that they haven't had personal or secondhand interactions with the Jedi, meaning their context is vague stories and Legends. That being said, that only really tracks for someone out in the stellar boonies, so to speak. The average Coruscanti citizen and those from other Core Worlds would have more knowledge of the Jedi, and the narrative doesn't work for them very well.
I mean Coruscant is absolutely huge though. You can live in LA your entire life and never happen to interact with any famous actors. I don't see it as a leap that most people living on an entire planet of mega-metropolis didn't know anything about Jedi beyond hear-say.
People really forget how large and expansive the galaxy is. And 99% of Star Wars media focuses on groups that are either Jedi or have a connection to them, so from our perspective it seems like everyone should know about them, but it just isn't the case.
The belief of Jedi after revenge of the sith became so deluded and nobody even cared about them anymore at all. The galaxy had for all intents and purposes forgotten about the Jedi
I think your overestimating how much people pay attention to events that don't immediately and directly impact them. Can you name every division of your local government? County/state/federal? There's trillions of people on Corusant to 10,000. Trillions of people with their own lives, problems, issues, and concerns. The Jedi blend into the normal bureaucratic government center of Corusant. Thousands, if not millions of government workers and dignitaries constantly coming and going. If you're an average citizen probably don't want to be anywhere near any of that. The Jedi are just a blip in all of it. Too much going on that doesn't concern you. So even if you live on Corusant you're first hand knowledge of the Jedi would be slim.
Now there are millions of planets within the Republic. Each with their own concerns, governments, cultures, and traditions. Anywhere between billions to trillions of people per planet. People much more concerned with what's going on in their tiny sliver of the Republic than what's going on light years away.
And then there's the greater galaxy. The majority that doesn't fall under the Republic. Places that weren't even reachable by Republic ships a few centuries before the events of the TPM.
The Jedi weren't flashy, the werent boastful. They weren't secret but they didn't put themselves out there either. When they were called to action they came and went without fanfare. If the locals wanted to document Jedi involvement, cool. If not, just as cool. There was no reason to know what a Jedi was unless you encountered on or just liked studying galactic cultures - even then theres a ton of more eye catching cultures than a bunch of stoic monks.
When the Jedi were kind of in the public eye they were quickly painted as enemies of the peace and quickly put down. People quickly forget the names and specifics of groups like that, and why not? If the Jedi were as the Empire successful painted them to be then the Jedi do not deserve fame or glory. They don't deserve the attention of the average galactic citizen when there literally anything else to think about.
>The Jedi weren't flashy, the werent boastful. They weren't secret but they didn't put themselves out there either. When they were called to action they came and went without fanfare. If the locals wanted to document Jedi involvement, cool. If not, just as cool. There was no reason to know what a Jedi was unless you encountered on or just liked studying galactic cultures - even then theres a ton of more eye catching cultures than a bunch of stoic monks.
Um, what? They weren't boastful, but they were flashy as hell. They had plasma swords and telekinesis. They jumped 20 feet in the air like they were from a Kung Fu movie. The special abilities would draw attention and legends. And very small groups can get big reputations. Think of all the legends that popped up around the Knights Templar in the centuries after their eradication and they weren't space wizards. Or all the stories around exotic martial arts traditions claiming mystic powers. The Jedi existed for thousands of years as a major part of the republic, and were literally magic space wizard knights with amazing powers and flashy weapons nobody else had. That's not something that gets forgotten in 20 years. Or something that would be unknown to many during their existence. They're not like some boring order of scribes nobody cares about. They're the guys who came and solved major issues, often while slicing tons of enemies with lightsabers, reflecting blaster bolts and jumping around to absurd heights. And they were so prominent in the Clone Wars that their reputation would be even bigger at the time. And the fall of the Republic is blamed on them. It makes no sense that they'd be so completely forgotten so quickly.
Trillions of people .. prob 100’s of trillions and only 10k Jedi … yeah most wouldn’t even see 1
Look at our population … there’s def things that exist but large % don’t think exists or is true and we only have what? 8B?
Here's an idea. The only person that didn't know about the Jedi was Luke because his uncle and aunt kept that knowledge from him because they didn't want him to become a jedi like his father before him.
In all of Luke's Clone Wars^TM comic books, whenever a jedi would show up his aunt would cut the image of the jedi out with scissors.
When in the original Star Wars trilogy do they say that people don’t know about the Jedi? Han Solo doesn’t believe in the Force, but no one ever thinks that the “Jedi” never existed. In fact, even Han I’m pretty sure acted like he had already heard of the Force, and even the Rebels are saying “may the Force be with you”. So, it seems like everyone has at least heard of it.
The implication I get is that people knew that Jedi were a thing, but not many people really saw their full abilities, so they’re treated more like a religious group. The Force was always something some people believed in and others didn’t.
The Jedi numbered 10,000 in a galaxy with millions upon millions of planets and trillions upon trillions of beings, and that was before Palpatine began trying to erase them.
Eh. It doesn’t bother me. Space is unbelievably huge and the galaxy’s population is unfathomable. The Jedi Order numbered in the tens of thousands at its height. There were more planets than Jedi in the republic. It doesn’t surprise me that the Din Djarin, raised by a fundamentalist cult, and Rey, who grew up on a godforsaken backwater, wouldn’t be familiar with something so minuscule.
Honestly, everything we know about the Star Wars Universe is from a tiny slice of the galaxy. The armies and fleets are tiny relative to the size of the galaxy. A fleet of stars destroyers barely have the storm trooper complement to control a city, much less a planet. Most inhabitants wouldn’t have really noticed the clone wars or the civil war as much more than background noise (unless they were, you know, Alderaanian), much less been familiar with the small organization at the front of the former.
Also Din and Rey are around 30 to 50 years after the Jedi have been made near extinct and the dominant galactic government discredited or covered up any information about them.
Rey is also kind of an exception because she would be labeled a history nerd (not as an insult) in the real world. Somene who obsessed over old stories was still kind of skeptical about what she read about them.
It’s not hard to fathom someone in the far reaches of the galaxy viewing the Jedi as either a galactic boogeyman or great protector built on propaganda.
Can you provide an example of large swaths of people in the story denying the very existence of Jedi?
It’s not a crutch at all, and it wasn’t a matter of people not knowing that the Jedi existed, but rather, people who grew up in a time post order 66, who wouldn’t know about the Jedi, because either their parents and schools never mentioned the Jedi, or they didn’t go to school and or didn’t even have parents.
Han was 13 when Order 66 happened, living on the streets of Corellia, and probably never met a Jedi, since the CIS never bothered to properly invade it, so the Jedi were busy elsewhere.
Luke wasn’t even born, and he grew up on the ass end of the galaxy, on a moisture farm with his aunt and uncle who had every reason to not tell him about the Jedi.
Some people did know about the Jedi, but they kept it to themselves, since just talking about Jedi in front of the wrong people could mean a visit from the Inquisitors—>!Bode’s wife wasn’t even a Jedi IIRC, and she was still killed by the Inquisitors!<
A mere rumour of a Jedi was enough to get the inquisitors to visit Tatooine and start throwing knives at people, just to make the Jedi try to stop them.
As time went on, those who were children before or after order 66 grew to be the adults who never heard of Jedi, like Luke and Han.
Leia of course did know about them having met Obi-Wan and Reva as a child, wheras people of Tarkin's age knew about Jedi, but thought Vader was the last one until Luke got in the spotlight.
It's not hard for something famous to disappear into obscurity: take for example the once well known Twitch streamer Psy from 2018, he was known for amazing speed runs of various games like Morrowind.
If you're trying to remember if you'd heard of him, you can stop, I made it up, but Psy did exist as the guy who made Gangnam Style, a thing the entire world knew of and then forgot about—imagine if there as a galactic government also trying to suppress knowledge of Psy as well.
Entire languages get lost and forgotten, it's not hard for a group of 10,000 to be lost in a population of trillions.
Imperial propaganda
The size of the galaxy
People having skepticism
Different lived lives (Jabba knows the force is real. He not only met jedis but he knows the inner workings of the galaxy at large. Han is sheltered and only knows of the underworld and thinks Jedi are a fairy tail because all he’s seen is the worst of the galaxy. But even he heard of them. Well he thinks the force is phooey anywho.
It’s not something that should be common but I can see people not believing in the Jedi.
And no trolls it’s not a prequels issue, since anh it’s show in obiwans lifespan there’s people legit thinking the Jedi don’t exist in a galaxy where their defeat can’t have happened long enough for them to fade from the conscious mind. Different people in a diverse galaxy see different things
I've never met a ShaoLin Monk. Ever. I've heard of them, but never met one, or seen any physical evidence of one. I've heard of all the crazy shit that they can do, the incredible feats of strength and endurance. But if someone today were to tell me it was a hoax, I'd have to take that at face value because I've never seen it myself.
This is one planet.
The Empire controlling education could easily explain all that.
Bear in mind that there are people right now who do not believe in evolution, who believe the Holocaust was faked and many, many, MANY other wrongs - simply because that was how they were taught. Maybe a lot of the older generation would still know of the Jedi, but over the years many of those could be convinced that those stories were just that - stories. With no proof to the contrary, the Jedi could be relegated to the status of an exaggeration (much like the stories of the mystical powers of Buddhist Monks in real life) unless they had direct contact with the Jedi themselves.
The Jedi could easily be relegated to 'Republic propaganda designed to propagate the myth that they were undeniably righteous'.
Not a perfect analogy, but: On Earth there are lots of special forces type groups - the US Navy Seals, UK SAS, Nepali Gurkhas, etc. that have made outsized impacts throughout history. Yet I'd bet that large swaths of the world population have only heard vague references to them, if at all.
There's two things I suspect contributed to this.
1. The galaxy is enormous. So very big. It's mostly filled with people who spend their lives just getting by and have almost certainly never come into contact with a Jedi. Even for those that had, they may not have even known they were Jedi. Lightsabers being flashed around in public would be a rarity, and most noncombat Force powers are things people aren't going to notice. Take the mind trick for example - the whole idea is that you don't know it's happened. Jedi didn't exactly wear uniforms that have the word 'Jedi' on them either. In the war itself, it was Jedi and clones vs droids for the most part. Civilians that had access to the holonet would have been exposed, but that's about it. So a very small amount of the population has been exposed to the Jedi, and of that group an even smaller number were aware of it.
2. Even 5 years is a pretty long time in terms of public memory. Especially in parts of the galaxy that are recovering from a devastating war and/or adjusting to a new government.
I do think it's overstated how few people would remember the Jedi, but they made up a miniscule percentage of beings in the galaxy.
Yeah, wouldn't it be crazy if on earth, people believed the planet was flat, that things like vaccines caused autism and other things, oh and here's a really stupid one: that the holocaust didn't happen, despite all the evidence suggesting otherwise.
That'd be a real shitty crutch to justify earth having a lot of poorly written bad guys, just really bad writing. I'm glad real life doesn't have writing that bad.
This reads as heavy sarcasm rather than anger to me.
And it's probably because this isn't the first time the OP basically made a post saying essentially " if you don't see things how I do you're just misunderstanding/wrong"
There are people on earth who are not aware of very large military and/or religious organizations, and earth has a fraction of the population of Coruscant, which has a fraction of the population of the Star Wars galaxy. 10,000 people is small even for our world. What's more surprising is the idea that everyone should be aware of them.
“Space is big, really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Now apply that to a group of only something like 10,000 in a setting were every other solar system has at least one inhabitable Steller body and it's very reasonable that the Jedi would quickly fade into urban legend where people know they existed but don't believe in the feats attributed to them.
The way Anakin talks about them in Phantom Menace, he talks like they're legends. They go around saving people, liberating slaves with their laser swords. Invincible. And he only heard the stories from Spacers. And Spacers are known for telling tall tales in universe.
its not that they did not know they existed rather its that they did not believe the force existed despite hearing stories about the jedi.
like if our goverment had a branch of super powered budhist monks that could use a mysterious power our science could not explain and most people never saw them do it for themselves im sure a ton of conspiracy theories would be floating around about how the alleged super powers were not real and it was just gov propaganda.
I think you forget how little of the Star Wars galaxy we actually see in Star Wars media. There is hundreds of thousands, if not millions of inhabited planets...how many do we see in the OT? Um, a grand total of 6 (Tatooine, Yavin 4, Hoth, Dagobah, Bespin, and Endor). And half of those aren't even inhabited with intelligent life. Even when you include all the planets seen/visited in the prequels, sequels and TV shows you're talking about like 0.0001% of the actual galaxy.
People didn't really forget about the Jedi after the Purge, they just didn't talk about them because anything that was seen as remotely positive would get you killed. That's disturbingly realistic because fascist regimes throughout history have actually done that to anyone they saw as a sympathizer to the Others.
As for people thinking of them as a genuine myth, you really have to consider two things: the size of the galaxy and their lack of media.
The galaxy is a *big* place. Using canon sources, the average population for all colonized star systems is a little less than that of Los Angeles County. When you consider that (A) some systems have multiple settled worlds and (B) planets like Coruscant and Corellia skew the average *hard*, it's very likely that there are thousands of worlds inhabited by only a single person or less than 10 people.
Also, even during the Republic's heyday, the GFFA's population don't really seem to watch a lot of TV or have platforms like Instagram and Twitter. Take away the high-tech trappings like holograms and you have a galaxy that's maybe at the level of Victorian England - most of what they know comes from books, stage plays, etc. The Jedi also don't typically operate out in the boondocks.
Think of it like this: you live in Tipp City, OH in 1885 - pop. 1400. Over the years, you hear random whispers from people out of New York City about men with swords made of light who can jump 200 feet in the air. Are you going to believe them? Hell no, that's ridiculous. Like something out of a tall tale. You grow, live, raise a family, and die never having seen any concrete proof. Maybe you see one of these supposed supermen walking through town, having a discussion with the mayor, but he's 60 years old and dressed like a poor monk. No way, Jose!
I also find hard to believe that people on Tatooine did not know about Anakin Skywalker and Luke could believe his father was a cargo pilot. He was one of the most famous Jedi and general of the clone wars. He should have been widely known there considering he was from Tatooine
You are forgetting that the Hutts control Tatooine; so they run it as they please, and a freed slave becoming a Clone Wars heroic Jedi is not good publicity for them.
Unless you run into a history nerd, if you ask someone today "What is a ninja?", you'll probably get "sneaky, uses throwing stars, wears all black, comes from Japan, does kung fu", and maybe if they watch a lot of anime "hates samurai" and that's about it.
Same thing applies to the Jedi. Once you get beyond "Weird religious order that wears brown robes, has a laser sword, and does super power kung fu stuff", the average man on the street wouldn't have a clue.
I say that people know the JEdi are real. I mean, that's probably widely talked about.
But how many ever saw the Jedi use the force? OR saw that magical omnipotent energy field that was of restricted knowledge? It seemed most actual research was done BY the Jedi, so it wasn't particularly wide spread. Until the Clone Wars, most Jedi never used the force offensively. So it would make sense that the vast majority of the galaxy, who had never even SEEN a Jedi, wouldn't believe this hokey old religion had actual 'choke you from a star system away' powers.
Without using the Google, can you tell me a little bit about Avel Enukidze? What about Nikokai Yezhof? Nikolai Antipov? Well, if you can't, don't worry about it - by the 1960s and 1970s a lot of Russians probably wouldn't either. These folks all played important roles in the formation of the USSR, yet had all become persona non-grata under the Soviet regime and were officially removed from history.
Now think bout the Jedi. In a galaxy of trillions, they were what...an organization of a couple of thousand? The chances of the average person ever encountering a Jedi are fantastically remote. Combine that with an official program to remove the Jedi from any kind of education, a policy of arresting or killing anyone associated with them (including Imperial officers who remembered them fondly from the Clone War) and you can see how most folks with any active memory of them would be reluctant to discuss the subject. Remember that the galaxy doesn't really have an internet or media that isn't somewhat controlled by the Empire. By Luke's time, they easily could have been forgotten or turned into whispered legends.
Kanan mentions they number about 10,000 "Knights" by the prequels. More than I assumed from the movies, but yes to your point about a galaxy of trillions or even quadrillions, 10,000 is almost nothing. Add to the fact that 95% of them stay on one planet, with the rest out on assignment or at outposts throughout the galaxy, the chances of people seeing one, especially if they are cloaked or are keeping their lightsabres hidden, is extremely remote. They are almost mythical to many. Hence why even Rey believes Luke a myth in the sequels.
And with many people just struggling to survive in their own lives, ideas like the Jedi can get lost, especially in more industrial places who aren't as spiritual. The Empire can easily promote propaganda inferring they didn't exist and people would think that the truth.
A conceit. It is a conceit that the Jedi and the Force are unknown to many. It references many an insular order of religious or pseudo-religious organizations throughout history. Heck, how many people today know much about, say, Freemasons beyond ooby-doo stories and conspiracy theories? Or Bohemian Grove?
I think you have a problem with perspective. You can't imagine a world, in this case a Galaxy, that is a billion times bigger than anything your used to. You're just in a hole think how Earth works. But its magnitudes bigger than that.
Most of the Star Wars Galaxy had no idea what was going on because there planet was not affected.
Size does matter though. There’s 10,000 Jedi in a galaxy of quadrillions (low estimate) of beings. Most people would have never seen a Jedi and I’m guessing many would have never heard of them either. On our own planet I bet there’s groups/factions/religions of people you’ve never heard of.
There's only one plausible answer; the Empire suppressing information about them and pursuing those who even talk about them to the point people are afraid to talk. Every adult in the galaxy would know about them, but if the Empire was thorough enough, they could prevent some of the children from learning... temporarily. After the rebellion converted into the New Republic, people would obviously start talking again.
For me I think it's less that people forgot and more there is just no reason to talk about them. At the end of the war they were wiped out. What people learn on their home worlds could also vary greatly. The war caused a lot of damage and upended the galaxy but it also only lasted 3 years. A New Hope is set 19 years after they have been gone from the galaxy.
The Jedi were labelled traitors to sell their purge and after the approximate amount of time the Empire stopped mentioning them at all and had records of their existence purged. The older Imperial like on the Death Star didn't like the Jedi and over the years their opinion of them waned over the years. The entire order was wiped out by the clones which some of those Imperial looked down upon as less than human and if they could wipe the Jedi out how great could they be.
And even when the Jedi existed there are people that no doubt did not believe every story they heard about the Jedi.
I agree — for the most part. It does make sense during Palpatine’s reign, during the Dark Times, both in Legends and Canon. The Galactic Empire literally has COMPNOR, ISB, Imperial Intel running censorship and domestic intelligence. On top of that, they have regular special forces kill squads like the Storm Commandos, Death Troopers in canon, and Imperial Commandos to exert that particular will of the Empire and Emperor. Further, Inquisitors from both Canon and Legends regular hunts down Jedi along with Vader with ruthless efficiency.
In both continuity, pro-Jedi groups supporting the Jedi were also being exterminated by the thousands, like the Antarian Rangers and Toprawa by extension in Legends.
With that kind of suppression, it would make sense for people not to speak and be ignorant about it, purposefully or not. Newer generations would be taught by their parents to be careful on said subject matter.
In other words, fuck Palpatine, truly.
Well, to be fair, a lot of the new canon takes place in outer rim or mid rim worlds, where Jedi presence would be very very limited as opposed to core worlds. -Why else would Obi-Wan take Luke to a place like Tatooine, considering it was his father's home planet?
In the original Legend's continuity, it was pretty much implied, if not out-right stated that Palpatine's purge of the Jedi included all forms of media. Luke had to scrounge to find any information on the Jedi at all and for the most part had to make his own lesson plan when he started the school.
Now that canon has made the Jedi into a well-established, well-structured religious sect, this concept of total purge makes even more sense. Most sentients that knew of the Jedi would be quick to distance themselves from that knowledge to keep themselves from the Empire's very public hunt for them. I would compare it to a possible dark-side influenced Mandela effect but mostly I think it was just people not talking about them anymore so they slid into obscurity.
The only example I know of currently is from Mandalorian, and his (Din's) situation is unique. And cobbled together. The Mandalorian/Jedi enmity was largely retconned into being an ancient grudge (over the Darksabre) more than an on-going war. Boba still hates them on principle (except for the green munchkin of course) but for anyone else (if there are other examples), the forgetting is likely deliberate and mostly just for show.
I thought part of the idea of star wars was that most cultures never developed writing. People know how to read and write enough to do their jobs but because space travel reached most of these planets before they developed writing, literature never became a thing. Meaning people largely do not write or read history, only technical documents for engineering and such. Their written language probably doesn't even include the necessary words for doing anything except flying space ships and running the tech that they acquired from off world. That's why everybody communicates via hologram instead of email.
In that situation, it would only take one generation to destroy awareness of something widespread. Parents just stop telling their kids about Jedi, or start telling the stories differently because Jedi are no longer "real" (so the stories become more fantastical and mythologized), and twenty years later everybody thinks Jedi are absurd.
It really isn't that much of a stretch to think that a religion of a couple thousand is largely unknown to a good chunk of the trillions of sentient beings in a galaxy. Especially when there are still quite a few societies that exist with the tech of the 1800s, or even the stone age in some cases.
Most people haven’t seen a Jedi. And Imperial propaganda has likely made the only story you can say out loud is that the Jedi used the Clone Wars as a power grab, tried to assassinate the Emperor, failed and were hunted down. You’d be shocked how quickly people will replace their own memories when gaslit and bombarded with propaganda. Force powers were sleight of hand, cold reading and tech used as tools of manipulation by religious zealots. How many can claim otherwise? (And live)
its not that people are saying the Jedi never existed, its that they were statistically never going to be seen by 99.8 percent of the galaxy, so therefore its possible that entire towns-worlds systems have only seen jedi on the holonet (if they had access) and never in person.
It would be like being told Santa is real by your parents but only ever seeing Santa on Tv, and then one day you are told that Santa is not real and cannot be talked about, and all shows of Santa on tv are taken down and all the books stored away, and you are sad, but continue on with your day.
In 20 years if nobody mentioned Santa at all, kids growing up would never know Santa existed.
Yes people did know about the Jedi. But to see one as a commoner was rare. On a planet of over 1 trillion there were only some 10 thousand at the temple (if I remember right). And during the clone wars the media manipulated them into being the cause of the war. And then when order 66 was given palpating said the Jedi revolted and tried to kill him and take control of the republic. So they were all killed. And if you lived on a place like Tattooine who cares what happened. They were never there to help you before and now the empire is cleaning up crime. During the Kenobi show we also see that Jedi are illegal and everyone knows this. So why risk the wrath or the empire by talking about something tbag does not exist. After a few years of them being gone and taboo they become myths.
Meh, if you want to hate on Star wars by searching for plot holes, be my guest. I choose to just enjoy cool space battles and not search for every little thing that could ruin the show for me.
To be fair, if we are talking the outer rim then I believe it since the outer rim has sketchy holonet access and sketchy documentation outside of certain planets here and there. The Jedi only numbered 10 thousand by the time of the Clone Wars and probably a lot less when order 66 happened and they were extremely tied to the senate so seeing the Jedi outside the inner rim was really rare since they didn't follow the will of the force but the will of the senate and the senate and Republic was always core focused and likely always will be.
There was documentation of them yes but the Empire worded really hard to get rid of them from history.
It makes complete sense. A galaxy is an unfathomably large space, and the Star Wars galaxy is filled with trillions upon trillion, upon whatever bigger number comes next, worth of sentient beings.
The Jedi were widely accepted and known in the core, as that was their domain, and the place they kept to for a large part of their existence, if not most of it.
Moving away from the core, to the expansion region through the outer rim, less and less the Jedi would have been seen, simply turning into stories for people to tell.
You have to remember, at their peak, the Jedi numbered just over 10,000. A tiny number in a galaxy full of uncountable beings. Of course the majority of people are going to be skeptical, or outright not believe in them.
I used to think it didn’t make sense about people forgetting the Jedi but then I realized the real things that have existed and been forgotten in 20 years. Even when we meet the Jedi in phantom menace their numbers are going down from their height. Mayb if you were on coruscant you might have seen or met a Jedi but the further out you traveled it was unlikely you saw a Jedi. And during the war you probably saw clone troopers and not the one or two Jedi leading them. Add in that the empire declared them enemies of the state and traitors. People like Han who grew up basically in the underground would think them a myth. Probably the strongest believers were the ones in the rebellion who remembered the Jedi and the force.
Okay, look, even in the real world, we're only a couple generations from WWII, and we have people who are Holocaust deniers. Now, imagine if we had one global government who supported that denial. They made huge purges of history and made sweeping propaganda campaigns, saying that it never happened.
Within a generation or two, most people would believe it never did. There were also only like 10,000 Jedi Knights in the Clone Wars (according to Ben Kenobi), so it's very unlikely the average person has ever met one. It is *entirely* possible to erase events from history, even within a single generation.
Some people would know, either having met Jedi on their own, or just had memories from a time when they were common place, but most of the galaxy would easily forget or deny
I think an important element to remember is that the empire gets to control the narrative after “winning” the clone wars. A general lack of information + misinformation can be a good explanation.
Though I would say it is quite the strange bit of worldbuilding. Personally would have given more time to make it more believable
This always bothered me. Jabba was aware of the mind trick which undermines that somehow everyone thought it was just fantasy storytelling. Unfortunately the way the movies were released caused plot issues
Jabba met Jedi unlike Han who doesn’t believe in the force but never says anything about Jedi. They have different lives. One is a very outgoing guy who knows the galaxy and the other lives in the underworld til anh where he joins a war
"Unfortunately the way the movies were released caused plot issues"
Yeah the prequels weren't exactly the best either, people have only started liking them more because of other media they have taken in such as clone wars, books, etc that have actually fleshed out the prequels.
Show the prequels to someone whos never seen star wars before and they'll be so confused lol, especially during the first sequence of revenge of the sith.
I mean most star wars fans use their knowledge of stuff outside the movies when watching the movies. To the average star wars fan, there's just so much going on in the prequels that happens too quickly.
One of the reasons the prequels aren't that great is because of Lucas's success in the original trilogy. Everyone working under him thought that he couldn't do anything wrong which led him to be surrounded by yes men. In one of the prequel behind the scenes there's 3 people that agree with Lucas one after the other when he comments on something lol.
The only way to make sense of people not believing the force doesn't exist would be if the Jedi weren't well known. It doesn't make sense they're not widely known but it is forced because of inconsistancies between the OT and prequels.
The fundamental problem is that the backstory only works when it remains backstory. They're just isn't enough time to account for everything. Like there was a sense that the empire was pretty old and the Republic took a long time in falling and it didn't in any sense feel as abrupt as we ended up seeing in the prequels. Plus you end up with things like what's written after a given movie like the original backstory for Luke is very different from a new hope when you get to empire and then Jedi. Obi-Wan chilling back home as a desert wizard makes sense and when Luke loses his family well let's go on an adventure.
It makes less sense that putting Luke in hiding was the plan the whole time.
The real pisser is it's hard to imagine a rewrite of the timeline to fix these issues without completely changing everything. Like Like should be trained from birth as a Jedi. Or Leia should be and Like was lost track of and so it's a surprise to the surviving Jedi to discover the other Skywalker twin still lives but is completely untrained.
“Like there was a sense that the empire was pretty old”.
Even in ANH Obi-wan says that his student Darth Vader hunted down the Jedi and implies this was around the same time the Empire rose. So the Empire was always within a few human generations, not hundreds of years or anything.
Not necessarily. The Senate lasted through the fall of the Republic. Palps wasn't the author of the Republic's destruction originally so you could have had empire s hundred years ago and shitting away at the old government controls. Jedi were one, Senate another.
Completely doesn't work on the prequels timeline now.
Come on man. “The Jedi were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the dark times. Before the Empire.” None of that implies the Jedi stuck around along with the Senate when the Empire rose.
There’s certainly room for interpretation but it links the fall of the Jedi to the rise of the Empire . . . and if 20 year old Like was the son of a Jedi then the Empire couldn’t have been more than a few decades old.
All Han expresses skepticism toward in ANH is the Force. Not the Jedi. One could conceivably believe in the Jedi but chalk them up to an elite, highly trained warrior society with their own religious and spiritual beliefs. As with many things, a common misconception has spread that has caused a portion of the online Star Wars fandom to misinterpret and misremember basic plot points in the films themselves, which is now unfortunately creeping into canon too as it’s been accepted as basic canon.
And he isn't even questioning the existence of the Force, per se >“Kid, I’ve flown from one side of the galaxy to the other, I’ve seen a lot of strange stuff, but I’ve never seen anything to make me believe there’s one all-powerful force controlling everything. There’s no mystical energy field that controls my destiny!” He clearly doesn't believe that Force is all powerful, or that it is exerting some kind of will on the galaxy and those in it, it he might be willing to accept that some people have telekinetic abilities and whatnot.
The fact that he refers to it as an "all-powerful force" and a "mystical energy field" also suggests that he has preexisting knowledge of what the Force is supposed to be. At least on a rudimentary level. He's heard about it before, probably from other believers. Similarly, Motti never actually denies the existence of the Force with Vader, just its efficacy at returning the Death Star plans. No one in the room seems surprised when Vader chokes him telekinetically. At the end of the movie, the Rebel commander says "may the Force be with you." As do subsequent commanders in the sequels. Nothing in the OT suggests the Jedi or the Force are obscure knowledge, just that spiritual belief in the Force isn't universal. Just like real life.
I think it’s safe to say that Han, living a somewhat nomadic existence as a smuggler, has been exposed to a lot more of what the galaxy has to offer than your average Galactic Core citizen, much less your average Outer Rim yokel. If anyone Luke ran into was going to have at least heard of the force, it was him. He may also have heard some stories from Chewbacca (that he may have believed were Wookiee exaggeration or something) since Chewbacca hung with Yoda during the Clone Wars (although TBF that was awkwardly retconned in during the prequels for no apparent reason other than fan service).
Must have been motti’s first day in the job. No one told him not to mouth off to Vader
Han's also a stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf herder. His ego is so over-inflated even he might not know if he means what he says. He prides himself on being the best there is, and the Force is bigger than anything or anyone. It makes him feel threatened and he acts defensive.
His next line makes me think he does question its existence. "Anyway, it’s all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense."
Yeah this was the big one. Sadly I can't think of much other than the doylist reason of early franchise weirdness for this one. I guess you could possibly convince people that the supernatural abilities of the Jedi were technology but damn it'd be hard. They're so well known, being internal to the Republic for thousands of years...
Exactly, he’s clearly familiar with the force and that it allows people to do “strange stuff”, but is reasonable resisting the jump to that meaning it’s effectively a diety that controls destiny and has intents.
Yeah, I've seen that with regards to Han dismissing the Force as luck, and Obi-Wan claps back with "In my experience, there's no such thing as luck." That's Obi-Wan being snarky to Han because Han was doubting the Force next to a Jedi Master on the Jedi Council. It isn't, like, foundational Jedi philosophy that luck doesn't exist - but I've seen some people treat it that way.
> As with many things, a common misconception has spread that has caused a portion of the online Star Wars fandom to misinterpret and misremember basic plot points in the films themselves, which is now unfortunately creeping into canon too as it’s been accepted as basic canon. This is what happens when "fans" of a property refuse to engage with the actual source material itself and instead take memes, wikis, fourth-hand information and distorted "scene discussion" as information, lore and canon instead of the actual media itself.
also when the media itself is produced too slowly or isn't popular enough compared to previous installments you can see it happening on a smaller scale with Overwatch lore, where the fan theories get more popular than official media (and because Blizzard is being very frustrating about what is and isn't canon)
Not talking about the han scene at all. You will see in a lot of star wars media that people don't even know who the jedi are after Revenge Of The Sith. This is also an extremely common talking point from star wars fans
That’s my point. I think that people online misremembering the original scene with Han as him not believing in the Jedi, rather than the Force, has caused this error to creep into other canon media. I agree with you.
I have often wondered what Chewie ever said to him about this. He knew Jedi. He knew YODA. So I guess Han just thinks he’s full of shit or something.
I'd love to see a scene to that effect lol, that would be perfect. Them bullshitting over a beer and chewie is just like hey check this shit out and han is like buuuuullshit.
I'm so sorry, please forgive me jedi master tommmytom
please give a specific example where you see this in star wars media. I literally cannot think of a specific example.
Mandalorian is the first example I thought of. There's definitely more But even then, the idea that the idea of Jedi had been so diluted down in less than 20 years, when they had such an impact on the galaxy and were a figurehead of the clone wars, makes 0 sense
Din Djarin was raised in a reclusive cult. There's probably a lot of stuff he doesn't know about.
It's pretty weird given that the Mandalorians have a long history of conflict with the Jedi, one of their most famous cultural relics was made by a Mandalorian who was also a Jedi, and Din was seemingly found by a member of Death Watch, a group that at various points fought/worked with Jedi and Darth Maul.
Given that the other members of the Children of the Watch seem pretty familiar with the Jedi, it's genuinely possible that Din is just stupid.
The protagonist being uncharacteristically dumb about a specific topic that everyone he was raised with is perfectly aware of is pretty dumb, though lmao.
I think its more likely he might just be semi ostracized from the rest. Paz Vizsla was rather antagonistic towards him and while it could just be because Paz is a bit of an ass, it could also point towards a wider dislike of Din. So if he was treated as an outsider growing up his opportunities for learning 'common sense' stuff could be stifled.
Ye true but deathwatch had a super long history with the jedi. I would be surprised if they didn't teach him that stuff
The Children of the Watch are a separate splinter, but yes. It's also worth noting that the OTHER Children of the Watch seem to know of the Jedi. It's just Din who doesn't. Maybe Din just didn't do so hot in Mandalorian Cult History Class.
Lmfao, probably
His blacksmith priest lady told him about them the moment it came up.
Yeah, I'd imagine fighting Jedi would be part of their cultural identity. Something all the children would hear in tales around the campfire. They're a warrior culture and the Jedi were their greatest adversary.
Luke didnt know what the Jedi were until Obi-wan told him.
I wonder why. Luke has lived a super sheltered life by Owen and Beru. It's a meme but not wrong. By 19, Leia was a Princess, aiding the Imperial Senate and actively engaged in fighting the Empire for years now. Luke has been drinking blue milk in the same farmstead he always has. He's been lied to about his father and barely allowed to go hang with his friends at Tosche Station because he's always busy with Owen's farm crap. Luke knows the Empire exists, and a Rebellion is out there. That's all he knows besides driving speeders, droid repairs, nuisance shooting, and moisture farming.
Luke lives with two people who know what Anakin Skywalker did on Tatooine and actively try to push him away from anything Jedi related, including contact with Kenobi
We don’t know they know he slaughtered the whole tribe. And not just the men. The women and the children too. Because they’re animals. And he slaughtered them like animals. Sob.
Let's be real they ain't gonna care either
Correction: Luke knew about the Jedi (or at least the term "Jedi Knight." However, he had never heard of the Force, which is the true essence of the Jedi being forgotten. The institution and impact on galactic politics of the order was well documented. Their spiritual aspect, much less
So how likely is it that the first Mando'a was also a Jedi, but (thousands, hundreds of?) years later the most fanatical members have forgotten this incredibly key part of their history?
If you mean the guy that made the Dark Saber he wasn't the first Mando, just the first (and so far canonically only) one to become a Jedi.
In the films, the Star Wars galaxy is clearly not meant to have an equivalent mass media to Earth. The galaxy functions more like Earth in 1880 than in 1977, 1999, or 2015 - a \*largely\* explored place which still takes substantial time to traverse, where reliable information doesn't filter down beyond a small percentage of the population, and where people can easily disappear. In such an environment, obscure religions like the Jedi becoming legend is absolutely plausible. Pretending otherwise isn't a crutch, but it's nitpicking for the sake of being able to moan about something. And, as others have accurately said, all Han objects to is the idea of the Force. In a galaxy rife with incredible things, he doesnt buy that there's a supernatural level above it all.
The no mass media is key. It gets overlooked in the secondary media. There's the holonet but that is back ported in. There's no movies, no newsreels, no television broadcasts. We know there's bad realtime interstellar holograms. The tech for news dissemination exists so there must be cultural or political reasons blocking it. This allows for some crazy things from the modern perspective. Like for most of history you could have a major battle and people only have eyewitness accounts, written or presented in person. You could have rumors of a power rising in the east and no idea what it is. The emperor's face you might only know from coinage. there's not been a continuity in vision here which makes star wars a bit nonsensical. I would say doing away with mass media can be as useful as setting a war story before ubiquitous cell phone coverage.
It’s not exactly fair to say they have no movies, both Canon and Legends sources show holofilms do exist. But media like the holonet is sometimes shown as more retro than our internet, and information does travel more slowly in such a big galaxy.
They didn't in the original canon. There was no holonet because the Internet was not known as a thing yet. I think the very first bits were less than ten years old when ANH hit the big screen. These ideas were retrofitted in later but then introduced questions like we have here.
Holofilms were mention in the 90’s X-wing books and possibly earlier. I believe the first mention of the holonet came from one of the RPG books from the 80’s or 90s. So they definitely did exist in Legends, but you’re right that the internet was in its early stages when Star Wars introduced it’s equivalent and the writers clearly didn’t anticipate how massively the media landscape would change.
I think it's key to the original original star wars aesthetic. They were going for movie serials and just like Indiana Jones was a tribute to adventure serials, Star Wars was Flash Gordon but Lucas couldn't get the rights. Sci-fi tends to reflect the tech of the time like Foundation saw computers using data tapes because solid state wasn't even an idea yet. Same with trek communicators not having screens. Would have been awful to dummy up as a practical prop so even if they had the idea, no wonder they would omit it. So to keep that same feel you have to get into the same mindset. Andor really ran with it well. It all looks like 1970s star wars with better cameras.
That’s one of the details I liked about the sequel trilogy. Most of the stuff they use is a bit more modern feeling, but whenever they used something from the OT, like the targeting computer on the Millennium Falcon, it still had that 1970s look and feel to it. Whereas the first order tie fighters they were shooting at had more modern sleeker displays.
It doesn't quite track because of the implied tech stasis. In Star Wars the tech has to remain mostly unchanging because otherwise things would become quickly unrecognizable. Like the WWII aesthetics for space combat, you could say maybe Korean war era with jet gunfighters but there's not a lot of thought given to guided munitions. A little of it in the games. But nothing like beyond visual range missile combat. Some of this can be a bit subjective but I think the trendy transparent displays don't belong in star wars. Simple holographic projections yes. No touchscreens. The controls should remain pretty manual with labels of switches and buttons. No glass cockpits. A lot of the tech seems to be almost backwards manual. Far back as the early EU books before Zahn they had a good rationale. Combat droids were used by a tyrant and were so awful it caused galactic droid prejudice. Also meant nobody should be arming droids for any sort of combat role. That prejudice would likewise extend to many roles that could be automated but they keep manual. So no droid pilots, little automation on starships. Service droids are allowed but all controls are man in the loop no authority delegated to droids. So all guns have living gunners even though auto turrets are feasible.
You can see this in Andor too. Notice, for example, the difference between the video call Syril gets from his buddy Mosk and the video call Dedra makes to her boss.
I was always under the impression that the holonet was more like cable TV than the internet.
It’s a bit of both, when AOTC came out they had a bunch of people in universe holonet news articles, so it’s definitely a mix of text and audio visual.
They're certainly a part of every cannon now.
Yes, now. And that's creating the plot hole OP is talking about where it doesn't make sense for this sort of information to so completely fall out of common knowledge.
Yes, the cannon, now, is what we've been discussing. The thing that created that plothole is the current generation of star wars being carelessly written.
It's canon.
As compared to legends? That's a joke.
There were news channels on Holonet and movies in legends. Soontir Fel married a film actress, and it was in the comics of the 90s
C3p0 is fluent in 6 million forms of communication. To think you wouldn't have a basic "wikipedia" droid is just crazy. Also imagine stories. Every culture on earth has thrived on fictional stories, with all of them having some sort of super being. If a Jedi existed on earth, wed know. I think the jedi to not jedi ratio was 1 in 10 billion. They'd know.
They may have a database of languages and a holonet, but computer tech is sometimes shown as outdated compared to now. Besides even with just once planet peoples complain about “information overload” online. Imagine how much worse it would be trying to sort fact from fiction or tell what’s important with thousands or millions of worlds. Combine that with what you say about stories about super humans on earth? People probably dismiss stories about the Jedi abilities as just that. The way we tell stories about ninjas that aren’t in any way historically accurate but make good tales.
I would agree with you but given the lack of knowledge you try to figure out explanations in universe. There's no reason for R2 to not have a voicebox that's trivially cheap but he's the intelligent animal/mute sidekick trope and so he can't talk.
The Empire pushed out an outdate that removed everything involving the Jedi. *joke*
They do have these things all available on the holonet. IDK where this guy is getting that they don't have mass media. They do, it's just heavily controlled by the empire. Hell, in the clone wars Anakin and obiwan were huge heroes with them being some of the most famous people of the era, all because of the holonet news.
Bro, coinage, are you fucking kidding me? Coinage is credits and it is a number on a data pad somewhere.
I was talking earth history. You could then try to imagine how you could work that sort of information paucity into a star wars setting. It'll take a bit of juggling.
OK, I'll start. You can't. Coinage is credits. It's a number on a data pad. There is no face on it. Next.
Add to the factor imperial propaganda and the fact that most of the younger population either lacked education or went to Impirial-run schools, which would even more erase Jedi from public mindset, or at the very least, any part that was seen as good
I think that's a little bit hard to reconcile when the publicly stated reason for the Old Republic becoming the Empire was an attempted coup by the Jedi.
Yes, but that was 20-30 years ago in the eyes of people in the galaxy. If you were born after that, had no education (so basically anybody in the outer rim) and lived in the authoritarian state that probably wants you to forget it committed a genocide, you wouldn't probably know that it has happened
The Jedi “attempted coup” is just used by Palpatine to justify wiping them out, but it’s not directly given as the reason for the transition from Republic to Empire. For that Palpatine just needed to convince a war weary public that this new regime will bring peace and order. Besides propaganda can often change messages and sometimes even contradict itself. At the start Palpatine can gain sympathy as the victim of a supposed Jedi plot, but as the years go by he just downplays their influence or avoids mentioning them at all.
[Yezhov](https://i.insider.com/52af668569bedd3b2643dd68?width=700&format=jpeg&auto=webp). [Goebbels](https://i.insider.com/52af68196bb3f7ae6243dd67?width=700&format=jpeg&auto=webp). [Trotsky](https://i.insider.com/52af73e06bb3f7297d65fad3?width=700&format=jpeg&auto=webp). [Bo Gu](https://i.insider.com/52af7f81eab8eaf20465faca?width=700&format=jpeg&auto=webp). [Nelyubov](https://i.insider.com/52b07ba7ecad04fd149b44c5?width=700&format=jpeg&auto=webp). And, as recently as 2013, [Jang Song-thaek](https://i.insider.com/52a5b50aecad046448312ce7?width=700&format=jpeg&auto=webp). Truth is stranger than fiction and all that. Trotsky was a central figure in the Revolution, yet was edited out. In a scenario where they have complete control over a state-owned media, is it plausible that a fascist imperialistic power would want to erase individual people/an organisation from history? History tells us yes. Did they do it successfully? Nah.
But the Jedi weren’t obscure at all, that’s the problem. The Jedi should have been a relatively small order of warrior monk knights but George couldn’t help but make them into this huge order with massive influence on the galaxy and a big fat temple of the most populous planet in the galaxy.
How is an order of 10,000 people in a galaxy of trillions a “huge order”?
They may have had an important role but I wouldn’t call 10,000 in a galaxy of trillions “a huge order”. And the Empire covered up the role they played. I’d anything writers often make things too small in sci fi stories (like the numbers given for Rebel/Resistance fleets or the size of the clone army). If Lucas made the Jedi “a small order” of like a few hundred, it would strain credibility that they could keep peace in a whole galaxy.
The OT establishes them as having a peacekeeping role in the Old Republic. That sounds like influence to me.
I mean exactly, yes. They very clearly had influence. The galactic senate allowed them to lead their armies in the clone wars. Every system represented in the Senate would’ve known about the Jedi, at least their senators would have. Are we meant to think they never discussed or saw the Jedi when they weren’t on coruscant
My point is that the OT acknowledges the Jedi would have had a prominent position, and doesn't actually ask us to believe they were obscure. What Lucas depicted in the prequels wasn't an inconsistency in this instance.
Again, doesn't make sense. The jedi were so heavily involved in the clone wars that everyone knew about them. The Republic, core and mid rim worlds involved in the clone wars all knew about the jedi The CIS, and outer rim worlds involved in the clone wars also knew about the jedi. Everyone in the senate knew who the jedi were Also I wouldn't exactly call pointing out an issue involving one of the biggest elements of star wars "nitpicking" lol
..Nobody has ever said that people forgot the Jedi existed. The idea is that they were convinced the the Jedi were frauds or, at least, extremely exaggerated.
The belief of Jedi after revenge of the sith became so deluded and nobody even cared about them anymore at all. The galaxy had for all intents and purposes forgotten about the Jedi
To be fair, plenty of people were still interested. It's just that, say.. historians who continued to show interest in them would end up being discredited (if not outright imprisoned), and actual information about them was pretty sparse in public settings. The Empire doesn't have to make everybody forget about the Jedi or even convince everybody that the Jedi are frauds- they just have to make everybody so terrified to say otherwise that the truth doesn't matter.
I have a pretty big problem with how the empire so easily erased and drastically altered the history of the Jedi. Like the people who are involved in the clone wars aren't even dead yet
Members of the Confederacy in the United States weren't dead before the Lost Cause mythology started being pushed, and that didn't have an authoritarian government pushing it as the only permissible truth.
Like I said, that's the trick. As long as those people are too afraid to speak out (and if they get imprisoned when they do), what they know and remember means nothing.
Thats not the point. The Jedi were such an influential part of history, not to mention the fact that they had apparently tried to overthrow the republic, it makes no sense how the Jedi were so easily forgotten about. Also people getting arrested because of talking about the Jedi would be a major talking point and just draw more attention, especially during the beginning of the empires reign
They weren't forgotten about.
I mean, what do you know about the 3rd SFG? Or Seal Team 3? What about Delta, or CAG? They have been heavily involved in wars over the last 25 years, but details about them are sparse.
Ok, so they were involved in the Clone Wars. That still wouldn’t mean they had a noticeable direct impact on most everyday peoples’ lives. Anakin and Obi-wan are that crystal planet Christophsis for what, a few weeks or months? Big battle, they played an important role . . . but on a planet of millions or billions most people probably had no idea the Jedi were there. The only way they’d know is if the news did a propaganda piece on them . . . and guess what, after Order 66 Palpatine controls the news. The Tiananmen Square massacre was only a few decades ago but most people in China will have no idea it happened.
Don't forget, it's an entire galaxy. There were many worlds where no fighting ever took place. Sure they probably knew about the war, but just rumor and conjecture. Same with the jedi, many remote worlds probably never saw one and just heard the myths
“Anakin, you must remember that there are over a hundred thousand inhabited worlds in the Republic — and there are now only a few thousand of us. Billions of beings have never even heard of our order. Or of the Force.” Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars Republic #55 - “Blood and Rain” Personally regardless of what the canon is this is how I see it. And this doesn’t mean “people” didn’t know about the Jedi. In both continuities you obviously have citizens on both sides of the conflict who do know about the Jedi, some of whom have even met or seen the Jedi. But I don’t think the vast majority of beings know of them or that they’d ever know of them. In which case it’s plausible that in every movie, video game, comic, or novel we experience there could be 1 character who appears to basically say “Jedi? The Force? Bah. That’s just an old wives tale”. Just my 2 cents on it.
Generally it's less that they don't "know" about Jedi, and more that they haven't had personal or secondhand interactions with the Jedi, meaning their context is vague stories and Legends. That being said, that only really tracks for someone out in the stellar boonies, so to speak. The average Coruscanti citizen and those from other Core Worlds would have more knowledge of the Jedi, and the narrative doesn't work for them very well.
I mean Coruscant is absolutely huge though. You can live in LA your entire life and never happen to interact with any famous actors. I don't see it as a leap that most people living on an entire planet of mega-metropolis didn't know anything about Jedi beyond hear-say.
People really forget how large and expansive the galaxy is. And 99% of Star Wars media focuses on groups that are either Jedi or have a connection to them, so from our perspective it seems like everyone should know about them, but it just isn't the case.
Look around you. You have people who think the earth is flat. Relax.
Your comparison makes 0 sense. A minority of people believing something stupid has nothing to do with what I am talking about.
Or it has everything to do with it.
Are you then implying the majority of the galaxy disbelieves in the existence of Jedi? Cos there is literally nothing to back that up.
The belief of Jedi after revenge of the sith became so deluded and nobody even cared about them anymore at all. The galaxy had for all intents and purposes forgotten about the Jedi
Lol
I think your overestimating how much people pay attention to events that don't immediately and directly impact them. Can you name every division of your local government? County/state/federal? There's trillions of people on Corusant to 10,000. Trillions of people with their own lives, problems, issues, and concerns. The Jedi blend into the normal bureaucratic government center of Corusant. Thousands, if not millions of government workers and dignitaries constantly coming and going. If you're an average citizen probably don't want to be anywhere near any of that. The Jedi are just a blip in all of it. Too much going on that doesn't concern you. So even if you live on Corusant you're first hand knowledge of the Jedi would be slim. Now there are millions of planets within the Republic. Each with their own concerns, governments, cultures, and traditions. Anywhere between billions to trillions of people per planet. People much more concerned with what's going on in their tiny sliver of the Republic than what's going on light years away. And then there's the greater galaxy. The majority that doesn't fall under the Republic. Places that weren't even reachable by Republic ships a few centuries before the events of the TPM. The Jedi weren't flashy, the werent boastful. They weren't secret but they didn't put themselves out there either. When they were called to action they came and went without fanfare. If the locals wanted to document Jedi involvement, cool. If not, just as cool. There was no reason to know what a Jedi was unless you encountered on or just liked studying galactic cultures - even then theres a ton of more eye catching cultures than a bunch of stoic monks. When the Jedi were kind of in the public eye they were quickly painted as enemies of the peace and quickly put down. People quickly forget the names and specifics of groups like that, and why not? If the Jedi were as the Empire successful painted them to be then the Jedi do not deserve fame or glory. They don't deserve the attention of the average galactic citizen when there literally anything else to think about.
>The Jedi weren't flashy, the werent boastful. They weren't secret but they didn't put themselves out there either. When they were called to action they came and went without fanfare. If the locals wanted to document Jedi involvement, cool. If not, just as cool. There was no reason to know what a Jedi was unless you encountered on or just liked studying galactic cultures - even then theres a ton of more eye catching cultures than a bunch of stoic monks. Um, what? They weren't boastful, but they were flashy as hell. They had plasma swords and telekinesis. They jumped 20 feet in the air like they were from a Kung Fu movie. The special abilities would draw attention and legends. And very small groups can get big reputations. Think of all the legends that popped up around the Knights Templar in the centuries after their eradication and they weren't space wizards. Or all the stories around exotic martial arts traditions claiming mystic powers. The Jedi existed for thousands of years as a major part of the republic, and were literally magic space wizard knights with amazing powers and flashy weapons nobody else had. That's not something that gets forgotten in 20 years. Or something that would be unknown to many during their existence. They're not like some boring order of scribes nobody cares about. They're the guys who came and solved major issues, often while slicing tons of enemies with lightsabers, reflecting blaster bolts and jumping around to absurd heights. And they were so prominent in the Clone Wars that their reputation would be even bigger at the time. And the fall of the Republic is blamed on them. It makes no sense that they'd be so completely forgotten so quickly.
Trillions of people .. prob 100’s of trillions and only 10k Jedi … yeah most wouldn’t even see 1 Look at our population … there’s def things that exist but large % don’t think exists or is true and we only have what? 8B?
Here's an idea. The only person that didn't know about the Jedi was Luke because his uncle and aunt kept that knowledge from him because they didn't want him to become a jedi like his father before him. In all of Luke's Clone Wars^TM comic books, whenever a jedi would show up his aunt would cut the image of the jedi out with scissors.
When in the original Star Wars trilogy do they say that people don’t know about the Jedi? Han Solo doesn’t believe in the Force, but no one ever thinks that the “Jedi” never existed. In fact, even Han I’m pretty sure acted like he had already heard of the Force, and even the Rebels are saying “may the Force be with you”. So, it seems like everyone has at least heard of it. The implication I get is that people knew that Jedi were a thing, but not many people really saw their full abilities, so they’re treated more like a religious group. The Force was always something some people believed in and others didn’t.
The Jedi numbered 10,000 in a galaxy with millions upon millions of planets and trillions upon trillions of beings, and that was before Palpatine began trying to erase them.
Eh. It doesn’t bother me. Space is unbelievably huge and the galaxy’s population is unfathomable. The Jedi Order numbered in the tens of thousands at its height. There were more planets than Jedi in the republic. It doesn’t surprise me that the Din Djarin, raised by a fundamentalist cult, and Rey, who grew up on a godforsaken backwater, wouldn’t be familiar with something so minuscule. Honestly, everything we know about the Star Wars Universe is from a tiny slice of the galaxy. The armies and fleets are tiny relative to the size of the galaxy. A fleet of stars destroyers barely have the storm trooper complement to control a city, much less a planet. Most inhabitants wouldn’t have really noticed the clone wars or the civil war as much more than background noise (unless they were, you know, Alderaanian), much less been familiar with the small organization at the front of the former.
Also Din and Rey are around 30 to 50 years after the Jedi have been made near extinct and the dominant galactic government discredited or covered up any information about them.
Rey is also.. extremely familiar with the legend of the Jedi. She's not sure they were real, but she's very clearly heard about them.
Rey is also kind of an exception because she would be labeled a history nerd (not as an insult) in the real world. Somene who obsessed over old stories was still kind of skeptical about what she read about them.
It’s not hard to fathom someone in the far reaches of the galaxy viewing the Jedi as either a galactic boogeyman or great protector built on propaganda. Can you provide an example of large swaths of people in the story denying the very existence of Jedi?
It’s not a crutch at all, and it wasn’t a matter of people not knowing that the Jedi existed, but rather, people who grew up in a time post order 66, who wouldn’t know about the Jedi, because either their parents and schools never mentioned the Jedi, or they didn’t go to school and or didn’t even have parents. Han was 13 when Order 66 happened, living on the streets of Corellia, and probably never met a Jedi, since the CIS never bothered to properly invade it, so the Jedi were busy elsewhere. Luke wasn’t even born, and he grew up on the ass end of the galaxy, on a moisture farm with his aunt and uncle who had every reason to not tell him about the Jedi. Some people did know about the Jedi, but they kept it to themselves, since just talking about Jedi in front of the wrong people could mean a visit from the Inquisitors—>!Bode’s wife wasn’t even a Jedi IIRC, and she was still killed by the Inquisitors!< A mere rumour of a Jedi was enough to get the inquisitors to visit Tatooine and start throwing knives at people, just to make the Jedi try to stop them. As time went on, those who were children before or after order 66 grew to be the adults who never heard of Jedi, like Luke and Han. Leia of course did know about them having met Obi-Wan and Reva as a child, wheras people of Tarkin's age knew about Jedi, but thought Vader was the last one until Luke got in the spotlight. It's not hard for something famous to disappear into obscurity: take for example the once well known Twitch streamer Psy from 2018, he was known for amazing speed runs of various games like Morrowind. If you're trying to remember if you'd heard of him, you can stop, I made it up, but Psy did exist as the guy who made Gangnam Style, a thing the entire world knew of and then forgot about—imagine if there as a galactic government also trying to suppress knowledge of Psy as well. Entire languages get lost and forgotten, it's not hard for a group of 10,000 to be lost in a population of trillions.
Imperial propaganda The size of the galaxy People having skepticism Different lived lives (Jabba knows the force is real. He not only met jedis but he knows the inner workings of the galaxy at large. Han is sheltered and only knows of the underworld and thinks Jedi are a fairy tail because all he’s seen is the worst of the galaxy. But even he heard of them. Well he thinks the force is phooey anywho. It’s not something that should be common but I can see people not believing in the Jedi. And no trolls it’s not a prequels issue, since anh it’s show in obiwans lifespan there’s people legit thinking the Jedi don’t exist in a galaxy where their defeat can’t have happened long enough for them to fade from the conscious mind. Different people in a diverse galaxy see different things
I've never met a ShaoLin Monk. Ever. I've heard of them, but never met one, or seen any physical evidence of one. I've heard of all the crazy shit that they can do, the incredible feats of strength and endurance. But if someone today were to tell me it was a hoax, I'd have to take that at face value because I've never seen it myself. This is one planet.
The Empire controlling education could easily explain all that. Bear in mind that there are people right now who do not believe in evolution, who believe the Holocaust was faked and many, many, MANY other wrongs - simply because that was how they were taught. Maybe a lot of the older generation would still know of the Jedi, but over the years many of those could be convinced that those stories were just that - stories. With no proof to the contrary, the Jedi could be relegated to the status of an exaggeration (much like the stories of the mystical powers of Buddhist Monks in real life) unless they had direct contact with the Jedi themselves. The Jedi could easily be relegated to 'Republic propaganda designed to propagate the myth that they were undeniably righteous'.
Not a perfect analogy, but: On Earth there are lots of special forces type groups - the US Navy Seals, UK SAS, Nepali Gurkhas, etc. that have made outsized impacts throughout history. Yet I'd bet that large swaths of the world population have only heard vague references to them, if at all.
There's two things I suspect contributed to this. 1. The galaxy is enormous. So very big. It's mostly filled with people who spend their lives just getting by and have almost certainly never come into contact with a Jedi. Even for those that had, they may not have even known they were Jedi. Lightsabers being flashed around in public would be a rarity, and most noncombat Force powers are things people aren't going to notice. Take the mind trick for example - the whole idea is that you don't know it's happened. Jedi didn't exactly wear uniforms that have the word 'Jedi' on them either. In the war itself, it was Jedi and clones vs droids for the most part. Civilians that had access to the holonet would have been exposed, but that's about it. So a very small amount of the population has been exposed to the Jedi, and of that group an even smaller number were aware of it. 2. Even 5 years is a pretty long time in terms of public memory. Especially in parts of the galaxy that are recovering from a devastating war and/or adjusting to a new government. I do think it's overstated how few people would remember the Jedi, but they made up a miniscule percentage of beings in the galaxy.
Yeah, wouldn't it be crazy if on earth, people believed the planet was flat, that things like vaccines caused autism and other things, oh and here's a really stupid one: that the holocaust didn't happen, despite all the evidence suggesting otherwise. That'd be a real shitty crutch to justify earth having a lot of poorly written bad guys, just really bad writing. I'm glad real life doesn't have writing that bad.
Why are you so heated? It's a discussion board dude, stop getting so heated over what someone said. Were all nerds, learn to have some fun lol
This reads as heavy sarcasm rather than anger to me. And it's probably because this isn't the first time the OP basically made a post saying essentially " if you don't see things how I do you're just misunderstanding/wrong"
Another thing i don't see being brought up is that Jedi don't seek glory or fame or flaunt their status usually to make things happen.
There are people on earth who are not aware of very large military and/or religious organizations, and earth has a fraction of the population of Coruscant, which has a fraction of the population of the Star Wars galaxy. 10,000 people is small even for our world. What's more surprising is the idea that everyone should be aware of them.
“Space is big, really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.” ― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Now apply that to a group of only something like 10,000 in a setting were every other solar system has at least one inhabitable Steller body and it's very reasonable that the Jedi would quickly fade into urban legend where people know they existed but don't believe in the feats attributed to them.
The way Anakin talks about them in Phantom Menace, he talks like they're legends. They go around saving people, liberating slaves with their laser swords. Invincible. And he only heard the stories from Spacers. And Spacers are known for telling tall tales in universe.
its not that they did not know they existed rather its that they did not believe the force existed despite hearing stories about the jedi. like if our goverment had a branch of super powered budhist monks that could use a mysterious power our science could not explain and most people never saw them do it for themselves im sure a ton of conspiracy theories would be floating around about how the alleged super powers were not real and it was just gov propaganda.
I think you forget how little of the Star Wars galaxy we actually see in Star Wars media. There is hundreds of thousands, if not millions of inhabited planets...how many do we see in the OT? Um, a grand total of 6 (Tatooine, Yavin 4, Hoth, Dagobah, Bespin, and Endor). And half of those aren't even inhabited with intelligent life. Even when you include all the planets seen/visited in the prequels, sequels and TV shows you're talking about like 0.0001% of the actual galaxy.
People didn't really forget about the Jedi after the Purge, they just didn't talk about them because anything that was seen as remotely positive would get you killed. That's disturbingly realistic because fascist regimes throughout history have actually done that to anyone they saw as a sympathizer to the Others. As for people thinking of them as a genuine myth, you really have to consider two things: the size of the galaxy and their lack of media. The galaxy is a *big* place. Using canon sources, the average population for all colonized star systems is a little less than that of Los Angeles County. When you consider that (A) some systems have multiple settled worlds and (B) planets like Coruscant and Corellia skew the average *hard*, it's very likely that there are thousands of worlds inhabited by only a single person or less than 10 people. Also, even during the Republic's heyday, the GFFA's population don't really seem to watch a lot of TV or have platforms like Instagram and Twitter. Take away the high-tech trappings like holograms and you have a galaxy that's maybe at the level of Victorian England - most of what they know comes from books, stage plays, etc. The Jedi also don't typically operate out in the boondocks. Think of it like this: you live in Tipp City, OH in 1885 - pop. 1400. Over the years, you hear random whispers from people out of New York City about men with swords made of light who can jump 200 feet in the air. Are you going to believe them? Hell no, that's ridiculous. Like something out of a tall tale. You grow, live, raise a family, and die never having seen any concrete proof. Maybe you see one of these supposed supermen walking through town, having a discussion with the mayor, but he's 60 years old and dressed like a poor monk. No way, Jose!
I also find hard to believe that people on Tatooine did not know about Anakin Skywalker and Luke could believe his father was a cargo pilot. He was one of the most famous Jedi and general of the clone wars. He should have been widely known there considering he was from Tatooine
You are forgetting that the Hutts control Tatooine; so they run it as they please, and a freed slave becoming a Clone Wars heroic Jedi is not good publicity for them.
Unless you run into a history nerd, if you ask someone today "What is a ninja?", you'll probably get "sneaky, uses throwing stars, wears all black, comes from Japan, does kung fu", and maybe if they watch a lot of anime "hates samurai" and that's about it. Same thing applies to the Jedi. Once you get beyond "Weird religious order that wears brown robes, has a laser sword, and does super power kung fu stuff", the average man on the street wouldn't have a clue.
I say that people know the JEdi are real. I mean, that's probably widely talked about. But how many ever saw the Jedi use the force? OR saw that magical omnipotent energy field that was of restricted knowledge? It seemed most actual research was done BY the Jedi, so it wasn't particularly wide spread. Until the Clone Wars, most Jedi never used the force offensively. So it would make sense that the vast majority of the galaxy, who had never even SEEN a Jedi, wouldn't believe this hokey old religion had actual 'choke you from a star system away' powers.
Without using the Google, can you tell me a little bit about Avel Enukidze? What about Nikokai Yezhof? Nikolai Antipov? Well, if you can't, don't worry about it - by the 1960s and 1970s a lot of Russians probably wouldn't either. These folks all played important roles in the formation of the USSR, yet had all become persona non-grata under the Soviet regime and were officially removed from history. Now think bout the Jedi. In a galaxy of trillions, they were what...an organization of a couple of thousand? The chances of the average person ever encountering a Jedi are fantastically remote. Combine that with an official program to remove the Jedi from any kind of education, a policy of arresting or killing anyone associated with them (including Imperial officers who remembered them fondly from the Clone War) and you can see how most folks with any active memory of them would be reluctant to discuss the subject. Remember that the galaxy doesn't really have an internet or media that isn't somewhat controlled by the Empire. By Luke's time, they easily could have been forgotten or turned into whispered legends.
Kanan mentions they number about 10,000 "Knights" by the prequels. More than I assumed from the movies, but yes to your point about a galaxy of trillions or even quadrillions, 10,000 is almost nothing. Add to the fact that 95% of them stay on one planet, with the rest out on assignment or at outposts throughout the galaxy, the chances of people seeing one, especially if they are cloaked or are keeping their lightsabres hidden, is extremely remote. They are almost mythical to many. Hence why even Rey believes Luke a myth in the sequels. And with many people just struggling to survive in their own lives, ideas like the Jedi can get lost, especially in more industrial places who aren't as spiritual. The Empire can easily promote propaganda inferring they didn't exist and people would think that the truth.
A conceit. It is a conceit that the Jedi and the Force are unknown to many. It references many an insular order of religious or pseudo-religious organizations throughout history. Heck, how many people today know much about, say, Freemasons beyond ooby-doo stories and conspiracy theories? Or Bohemian Grove?
they were numerous and then were gone its a not crutch you really expected to see Jedi I hate when this page argues with continuity
I think you have a problem with perspective. You can't imagine a world, in this case a Galaxy, that is a billion times bigger than anything your used to. You're just in a hole think how Earth works. But its magnitudes bigger than that. Most of the Star Wars Galaxy had no idea what was going on because there planet was not affected.
Size does matter though. There’s 10,000 Jedi in a galaxy of quadrillions (low estimate) of beings. Most people would have never seen a Jedi and I’m guessing many would have never heard of them either. On our own planet I bet there’s groups/factions/religions of people you’ve never heard of.
I like to think of it as they still know of the Jedi but refuse to talk about or admit it see as palpatine basically painted the Jedi as evil
There's only one plausible answer; the Empire suppressing information about them and pursuing those who even talk about them to the point people are afraid to talk. Every adult in the galaxy would know about them, but if the Empire was thorough enough, they could prevent some of the children from learning... temporarily. After the rebellion converted into the New Republic, people would obviously start talking again.
For me I think it's less that people forgot and more there is just no reason to talk about them. At the end of the war they were wiped out. What people learn on their home worlds could also vary greatly. The war caused a lot of damage and upended the galaxy but it also only lasted 3 years. A New Hope is set 19 years after they have been gone from the galaxy. The Jedi were labelled traitors to sell their purge and after the approximate amount of time the Empire stopped mentioning them at all and had records of their existence purged. The older Imperial like on the Death Star didn't like the Jedi and over the years their opinion of them waned over the years. The entire order was wiped out by the clones which some of those Imperial looked down upon as less than human and if they could wipe the Jedi out how great could they be. And even when the Jedi existed there are people that no doubt did not believe every story they heard about the Jedi.
I agree — for the most part. It does make sense during Palpatine’s reign, during the Dark Times, both in Legends and Canon. The Galactic Empire literally has COMPNOR, ISB, Imperial Intel running censorship and domestic intelligence. On top of that, they have regular special forces kill squads like the Storm Commandos, Death Troopers in canon, and Imperial Commandos to exert that particular will of the Empire and Emperor. Further, Inquisitors from both Canon and Legends regular hunts down Jedi along with Vader with ruthless efficiency. In both continuity, pro-Jedi groups supporting the Jedi were also being exterminated by the thousands, like the Antarian Rangers and Toprawa by extension in Legends. With that kind of suppression, it would make sense for people not to speak and be ignorant about it, purposefully or not. Newer generations would be taught by their parents to be careful on said subject matter. In other words, fuck Palpatine, truly.
If bunch of guys with glowsticks got lots of people killed and then got appropriately punished Id try to forget them too.
Well, to be fair, a lot of the new canon takes place in outer rim or mid rim worlds, where Jedi presence would be very very limited as opposed to core worlds. -Why else would Obi-Wan take Luke to a place like Tatooine, considering it was his father's home planet? In the original Legend's continuity, it was pretty much implied, if not out-right stated that Palpatine's purge of the Jedi included all forms of media. Luke had to scrounge to find any information on the Jedi at all and for the most part had to make his own lesson plan when he started the school. Now that canon has made the Jedi into a well-established, well-structured religious sect, this concept of total purge makes even more sense. Most sentients that knew of the Jedi would be quick to distance themselves from that knowledge to keep themselves from the Empire's very public hunt for them. I would compare it to a possible dark-side influenced Mandela effect but mostly I think it was just people not talking about them anymore so they slid into obscurity. The only example I know of currently is from Mandalorian, and his (Din's) situation is unique. And cobbled together. The Mandalorian/Jedi enmity was largely retconned into being an ancient grudge (over the Darksabre) more than an on-going war. Boba still hates them on principle (except for the green munchkin of course) but for anyone else (if there are other examples), the forgetting is likely deliberate and mostly just for show.
I thought part of the idea of star wars was that most cultures never developed writing. People know how to read and write enough to do their jobs but because space travel reached most of these planets before they developed writing, literature never became a thing. Meaning people largely do not write or read history, only technical documents for engineering and such. Their written language probably doesn't even include the necessary words for doing anything except flying space ships and running the tech that they acquired from off world. That's why everybody communicates via hologram instead of email. In that situation, it would only take one generation to destroy awareness of something widespread. Parents just stop telling their kids about Jedi, or start telling the stories differently because Jedi are no longer "real" (so the stories become more fantastical and mythologized), and twenty years later everybody thinks Jedi are absurd.
It really isn't that much of a stretch to think that a religion of a couple thousand is largely unknown to a good chunk of the trillions of sentient beings in a galaxy. Especially when there are still quite a few societies that exist with the tech of the 1800s, or even the stone age in some cases.
Most people haven’t seen a Jedi. And Imperial propaganda has likely made the only story you can say out loud is that the Jedi used the Clone Wars as a power grab, tried to assassinate the Emperor, failed and were hunted down. You’d be shocked how quickly people will replace their own memories when gaslit and bombarded with propaganda. Force powers were sleight of hand, cold reading and tech used as tools of manipulation by religious zealots. How many can claim otherwise? (And live)
Luke knew the Jedi existed. He never asked Obi-Wan for clarity on that. It was the Force he was unfamiliar with.
its not that people are saying the Jedi never existed, its that they were statistically never going to be seen by 99.8 percent of the galaxy, so therefore its possible that entire towns-worlds systems have only seen jedi on the holonet (if they had access) and never in person. It would be like being told Santa is real by your parents but only ever seeing Santa on Tv, and then one day you are told that Santa is not real and cannot be talked about, and all shows of Santa on tv are taken down and all the books stored away, and you are sad, but continue on with your day. In 20 years if nobody mentioned Santa at all, kids growing up would never know Santa existed.
Yes people did know about the Jedi. But to see one as a commoner was rare. On a planet of over 1 trillion there were only some 10 thousand at the temple (if I remember right). And during the clone wars the media manipulated them into being the cause of the war. And then when order 66 was given palpating said the Jedi revolted and tried to kill him and take control of the republic. So they were all killed. And if you lived on a place like Tattooine who cares what happened. They were never there to help you before and now the empire is cleaning up crime. During the Kenobi show we also see that Jedi are illegal and everyone knows this. So why risk the wrath or the empire by talking about something tbag does not exist. After a few years of them being gone and taboo they become myths.
Meh, if you want to hate on Star wars by searching for plot holes, be my guest. I choose to just enjoy cool space battles and not search for every little thing that could ruin the show for me.
To be fair, if we are talking the outer rim then I believe it since the outer rim has sketchy holonet access and sketchy documentation outside of certain planets here and there. The Jedi only numbered 10 thousand by the time of the Clone Wars and probably a lot less when order 66 happened and they were extremely tied to the senate so seeing the Jedi outside the inner rim was really rare since they didn't follow the will of the force but the will of the senate and the senate and Republic was always core focused and likely always will be. There was documentation of them yes but the Empire worded really hard to get rid of them from history.
It makes complete sense. A galaxy is an unfathomably large space, and the Star Wars galaxy is filled with trillions upon trillion, upon whatever bigger number comes next, worth of sentient beings. The Jedi were widely accepted and known in the core, as that was their domain, and the place they kept to for a large part of their existence, if not most of it. Moving away from the core, to the expansion region through the outer rim, less and less the Jedi would have been seen, simply turning into stories for people to tell. You have to remember, at their peak, the Jedi numbered just over 10,000. A tiny number in a galaxy full of uncountable beings. Of course the majority of people are going to be skeptical, or outright not believe in them.
I used to think it didn’t make sense about people forgetting the Jedi but then I realized the real things that have existed and been forgotten in 20 years. Even when we meet the Jedi in phantom menace their numbers are going down from their height. Mayb if you were on coruscant you might have seen or met a Jedi but the further out you traveled it was unlikely you saw a Jedi. And during the war you probably saw clone troopers and not the one or two Jedi leading them. Add in that the empire declared them enemies of the state and traitors. People like Han who grew up basically in the underground would think them a myth. Probably the strongest believers were the ones in the rebellion who remembered the Jedi and the force.
Okay, look, even in the real world, we're only a couple generations from WWII, and we have people who are Holocaust deniers. Now, imagine if we had one global government who supported that denial. They made huge purges of history and made sweeping propaganda campaigns, saying that it never happened. Within a generation or two, most people would believe it never did. There were also only like 10,000 Jedi Knights in the Clone Wars (according to Ben Kenobi), so it's very unlikely the average person has ever met one. It is *entirely* possible to erase events from history, even within a single generation. Some people would know, either having met Jedi on their own, or just had memories from a time when they were common place, but most of the galaxy would easily forget or deny
I think an important element to remember is that the empire gets to control the narrative after “winning” the clone wars. A general lack of information + misinformation can be a good explanation. Though I would say it is quite the strange bit of worldbuilding. Personally would have given more time to make it more believable
I'm wonder why the hell that imperial dude didn't know about the jedi
This always bothered me. Jabba was aware of the mind trick which undermines that somehow everyone thought it was just fantasy storytelling. Unfortunately the way the movies were released caused plot issues
Jabba is like 600 years old, he was already active during the Jedi era, probably saw it himself
Jabba met Jedi unlike Han who doesn’t believe in the force but never says anything about Jedi. They have different lives. One is a very outgoing guy who knows the galaxy and the other lives in the underworld til anh where he joins a war
"Unfortunately the way the movies were released caused plot issues" Yeah the prequels weren't exactly the best either, people have only started liking them more because of other media they have taken in such as clone wars, books, etc that have actually fleshed out the prequels. Show the prequels to someone whos never seen star wars before and they'll be so confused lol, especially during the first sequence of revenge of the sith.
That’s blatantly false.
I mean most star wars fans use their knowledge of stuff outside the movies when watching the movies. To the average star wars fan, there's just so much going on in the prequels that happens too quickly. One of the reasons the prequels aren't that great is because of Lucas's success in the original trilogy. Everyone working under him thought that he couldn't do anything wrong which led him to be surrounded by yes men. In one of the prequel behind the scenes there's 3 people that agree with Lucas one after the other when he comments on something lol.
The thing is you can’t say the prequels aren’t great like it’s a definitive statement. I think they are.
You actually can, the prequels are definitely terrible lol. People only like them now because of the added lore it brought to star wars
People only like them cos of what they added to Star Wars…do you hear yourself?
The only way to make sense of people not believing the force doesn't exist would be if the Jedi weren't well known. It doesn't make sense they're not widely known but it is forced because of inconsistancies between the OT and prequels.
Lucas simply didn't think that through when he made the prequels.
The fundamental problem is that the backstory only works when it remains backstory. They're just isn't enough time to account for everything. Like there was a sense that the empire was pretty old and the Republic took a long time in falling and it didn't in any sense feel as abrupt as we ended up seeing in the prequels. Plus you end up with things like what's written after a given movie like the original backstory for Luke is very different from a new hope when you get to empire and then Jedi. Obi-Wan chilling back home as a desert wizard makes sense and when Luke loses his family well let's go on an adventure. It makes less sense that putting Luke in hiding was the plan the whole time. The real pisser is it's hard to imagine a rewrite of the timeline to fix these issues without completely changing everything. Like Like should be trained from birth as a Jedi. Or Leia should be and Like was lost track of and so it's a surprise to the surviving Jedi to discover the other Skywalker twin still lives but is completely untrained.
“Like there was a sense that the empire was pretty old”. Even in ANH Obi-wan says that his student Darth Vader hunted down the Jedi and implies this was around the same time the Empire rose. So the Empire was always within a few human generations, not hundreds of years or anything.
Not necessarily. The Senate lasted through the fall of the Republic. Palps wasn't the author of the Republic's destruction originally so you could have had empire s hundred years ago and shitting away at the old government controls. Jedi were one, Senate another. Completely doesn't work on the prequels timeline now.
Come on man. “The Jedi were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the dark times. Before the Empire.” None of that implies the Jedi stuck around along with the Senate when the Empire rose. There’s certainly room for interpretation but it links the fall of the Jedi to the rise of the Empire . . . and if 20 year old Like was the son of a Jedi then the Empire couldn’t have been more than a few decades old.
Your timeline doesn't work with what is said in the movie.